Senator John Frink PhD

A cartoon of Dr Frink by noted charicaturist Groen Matting.

Senator John Frink was born in the unremarkable and rather barren and depressing colonial outpost of Stown, Q7. His parents were engineers, playing a part in the day-to-day battle to keep things running. John was bright and creative, possibly a bit too much so for the limited possibilities of his environment. He joined the Martian Star Navy, but this was pretty much a device to get him off-planet and a better education. His CO had him right: "Too bloody clever by half, liable to get us all into trouble". John was great at technical stuff, and no coward and not insubordinate, but did tend to innovate in situations where it wasn't really called for. His CO slid him out of the service, into an academic scholarship at the Underground Martian Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST) on New Mars, in which he excelled. He rapidly rose to tenure and was notable by the sheer range of problems he tackled. His main work was hard-core mathematics, but he drifted into biology, economics and other areas.

It was economics that got him into politics. He did an analysis of some financial matters, and deduced that something was wrong with the finances of The Hump (Q4). He realized that a rather serious case of financial mismanagement, bordering on fraud, was the most likely explanation and told the authorities. This incident led to the celebrated prosecution by Drakkir Hands (now one of his Senatorial colleagues) of the Quadrant 4 Supreme Councillor Verres (a supporter of the Colonial Growth Party), and after the fuss had died down Frink was recruited as an analyst by the Central Democratic Party, which had done well out of the scandal. Frink did not stay an analyst for long - by the late 3170s he had managed to parlay his reputation within the party to gain a crack at political office, serving as a junior councillor on the Council of the Martian Union for three terms. He left the Council in 3190, moving back into the higher echelons of academia as a particpant in a number of political and scientific policy boards, and it was largely his work on these that led the Martian Universities Council to select him as their Senatorial representative in 3198. He has sat on the Senate since then, but did not hold office until 3200, when his CDP colleague Charles Harness became Supreme Councillor of the Martian Union, and invited Dr Frink to take up his current Science and Technology brief.

Frink is known to be frustrated at the slow pace of scientific progress; it is his main aim to stimulate this. He has some good contacts in the intelligence service, having designed some cryptographic methods for his PhD that are still in use. He still has a small research group, one student is trying to crack Forerunner symbols and another works on the epidemiology of the Wild Card virus. He is a risk taker and an eclectic thinker. This can sometimes get him into trouble, but he usually gets himself out of it. Many people believe that he is eccentric, though his survival in politics suggests that this may be a bit of a cover for a fairly shrewd person. He can be very direct, tends to speak his mind, is very energetic and speaks too fast.

He is married to Dawn-li Frink, and has two sons. Their relationship seems good, with no obvious scandals.